Prediction of on-design and off-design performance for a solid oxide fuel cell power module

This paper presents a power or ''stack'' model which accurately predicts on-design as well as off-design performance for a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) bundle or module. Most researchers have chosen simply to assume that the performance of multiple cells is just a linear extension of a single cells' performance [1, 2]. This paper shows that this assumption is incorrect and that the performance of a single cell must be integrated into a power module model to predict performance accurately. This paper also shows that, since module performance is not a linear extension of single cell performance, off-design predictions are important, and the position of cell failure is critical as to whether a degraded module remains economically viable.